A Year Ago Today
by flapjacks
Summary: Moments. That's all you get with the people you love. Because in a split second everything can change. All it takes is a split second. ONESHOT. *Slightly edited, some new content*


**Author's Note: **Just a short something I wrote this morning. I love Elliot and Olivia, I just totally love them. There's a few swear words here and there, so sorry. And for the sake of this fic, Kathy and Elliot divorced after EJ's birth... not that this is a romance fic or anything...

**Disclaimer:** Dick Wolf owns them, but I own this story :)

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___Elliot looked up from the files at his desk as soon as he heard her drop her bag onto the desk. His eyes flicked over to the clock, before landing back on her._

_"Where the hell have you been?! I called you 85 times!" he said, a little angrier than he'd intended to. He was frustrated that she'd chosen today to be later, especially when she knew how much work they had to get through._

_"Sorry, I know we have a lot of work to get through. Just… just give me a minute, I have to talk to Cragen", she replied quietly and that's when Elliot realised how ashen her face was._

_"What's wrong? Where were you?" he asked, gentler this time._

_"I was at the doctors."_

_"Why? What's wrong?" he asked instantly. Any shred of anger he had towards her disappeared and was replaced with fear and concern. His worry only increased when she suddenly tore her eyes away from his and looked to her side._

_"Olivia…?"_

_"Nothing, nothing." She replied quickly, now fiddling through her bag in front of her and shaking her head._

_Elliot stood up from his chair and moved to her side but she didn't cease the search through her bag. He brought his hand up to her upper arm and gently squeezed it, "Olivia what is it? What's wrong?"_

_She looked up this time and turned her head so that they were making eye contact. The proximity allowed Elliot to see the fear in her eyes and he didn't let go of her arm, if anything he held it a little tighter; her uncertainty putting him on edge._

_"Cancer." She said softly. "I have cancer."_

_He stood silently still for a minute, his eyes searching hers for any sign of a bad joke. Olivia couldn't have cancer. "Yeah", she said quietly, pulling away from him and heading towards Cragen's office. He remained still for a second, trying to process what Olivia had just said before quickly jogging after her. Reaching out his hand, Elliot grabbed her upper arm again and pulled her around. She looked up at him but didn't pull away._

_"Wha… what do you mean you have cancer?" Elliot found himself asking and he realised his hands were shaking. "What type? When did you find out? How ar-"_

_"Elliot I have to talk to Don." Olivia sighed, pulling away from him and continuing towards Captain Cragen's office._

_And Elliot stood there alone in the center of the busy squadroom, perfectly still in the center of all the chaos and movement, and watched her disappear into the office._

_Elliot had been sitting in Olivia's chair for twenty minutes, his eyes fixed on the door at the end of the room. As soon as he saw the doorknob turn he jumped to his feet and raced towards the doorway where Cragen and Olivia now stood. "If you need anything, let me know," he heard Cragen say to Olivia who smiled and nodded before turning to face Elliot._

_"Shit, you scared me." She said, jumping a little._

_"How long have you known, did you just find out today?" Elliot asked instantly. He'd been trying to figure out what to say when she emerged from the office but he found he couldn't think straight. Not when his partner, his best friend had just told him she had a life-threatening illness._

_Without giving an answer, Olivia pushed past him and began quickly heading towards the stairs. Elliot was at her side instantly, following her as they made there way up the stairs._

_"Olivia you-"Elliot began but she cut him off._

_"Don't. I don't want to talk about it."_

_"What the hell do you mean you don't want to talk about it? You can't drop a bombshell like that and expect me to just let it go!"_

_"Well I didn't want to tell you Elliot... not like that."_

_By now they'd reached the locker room and Olivia beelined straight to hers, pulled out two aspirin and downed them with a gulp of water. But still Elliot continued to bombard her._

_"You can't seriously expect me to drop this Olivia. This is something huge! What did the doctors say? When are you starting treatment? Wh-"_

_Olivia had dropped her head and was rubbing her temple with her left hand in an attempt to soothe her pounding headache. "Elliot!" she cried and he couldn't help but notice the desperation in her voice. He felt his heart fall a little more and watched her hold up her right hand as a signal for him to stop, her left still at her temple._

_"Please. Just… just give me a minute okay. Just give me a minute to fucking think Elliot." She said, folding her arms across her chest and hunching a little as she held herself tightly._

_Elliot obeyed and fell silent, watching as she began to unconsciously pace in front of him. She was shaking her head slightly and biting her lip, her arms still across her chest. They remained like this for a couple of minutes; Olivia slowly walking back and forth and ignoring Elliot's presence while Elliot stood still, never taking his eyes off her; watching every move she made._

_"Ovarian," she said, looking at him now but still pacing. "Ovarian cancer."_

_Elliot opened his mouth to reply but closed it again as Olivia continued to speak._

_"I… I saw a doctor a few days ago, I'd been having pain… some bleeding. They did tests and everything and they called me back in today and they… I scheduled the surgery for two days time…" and then she stopped suddenly. She turned to face Elliot and he took a few steps towards her._

_"They… they think it's pretty advanced…" she said softly, her voice growing shakier by the second and he saw that her eyes had welled up with tears. "They said that it's advanced and they don't know if… I … oh god. Oh god Elliot."_

_The second that Elliot saw that first tear roll down her cheek he closed the gap between them and pulled her into an embrace. It wasn't something he did often, in fact the day that Kathy had given birth to EJ was the only occasion he could recall. But Olivia was his best friend, it shouldn't be something foreign. And right now he could tell she was sinking. She fought him at first, struggling to pull away but he held her tightly and after a minute she gave in and stopped. _

_A sob broke in her chest and it sent waves of cold through her body, causing her to shiver. He felt it too. And Olivia allowed him to hold her and Elliot took the opportunity to pull her even closer. "I… oh god. I have cancer. I have… I have cancer." She repeated over and over again, as if it was only just sinking in. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck" She whispered again and again through her tears that were now falling rapidly. And for the first time in a long time, she made no effort to hide them from Elliot. For the first time in a long time Olivia allowed herself to cry in front of him._

_She lifted her head from his chest and looked up at him. Her face was tear-stained, her eyes were bloodshot. "What am I gonna do El? What the fuck am I gonna do?" she whispered, the desperation in her stare made his heart beat faster. Because Olivia always knew what to do. Elliot knew it was his turn. It was his turn to be the rock, the emotional support that she had been for him so many times over the years._

_"You're gonna get the surgery. Start the treatment. And get better." He said determinedly. "You're gonna be fine Liv. You're gonna be okay." He wasn't sure if he'd said that last part to reassure her, or to reassure himself. Because as Elliot watched his partner's head fall back down to lean against his chest he realised how new this all was. How much this had already changed them. Here Olivia was, this strong-willed woman who never admitted to fear or pain, doing exactly that._

_Elliot felt a wet patch forming on his shirt beneath where her face was and felt his own eyes welling up as his mind continued to race. As he made the connection between cancer and death. As he realised that as strong as she was, as much of a fighter that Olivia was, it was possible that she would lose this battle. He involuntarily shivered and then felt Olivia's breath on his neck as she spoke quietly._

_"I'm scared Elliot."_

_"I know Liv, I know," he replied, just as quietly as a tear rolled down his cheek. He pulled his arms tighter around her and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. "I know."_

Elliot bolted upright in his bed, panting wildly. Frantically looking around the room he realised where he was and lay back down, staring at the ceiling. It had been exactly a year since Olivia died and he still dreamt about the day she told him. The day she told him her diagnosis, the day she had surgery, the days that followed. The days with no change. He'd been having dreams about those days for the whole 365 days. He tried to remember her better days. Healthier days. Before the sickness. Before the chemo. Before she became so frail he was terrified that he'd break her. Before all that. Back when she was okay. When Olivia was okay…

She had to leave the SVU soon after she found out. She didn't come back after the surgery, only a couple of times to say hello and pick up some things. He'd go over to her place a lot. Bring her some case files to look over even though he wasn't supposed to. Elliot didn't care if he wasn't supposed to… Olivia liked it and that's all that mattered to him. When things started to get worse Elliot found himself there more often. Olivia didn't ask him to be, she never asked him for anything but she was grateful. Eventually after a couple of months he moved in to take care of her. Eventually she gave in and let him move in. And let him take care of her. It had taken a while for her to let him. But she was too weak to fight him anymore. And he'd been practically living there anyway.

"I'm dying El." He remembered the way she'd said those three words. Like she felt she was letting him down but suffocating from her fear and pain in the same breath. Elliot remembered that exact moment. Where they were, what they were doing… her exact words on that day she told him. The day she told him that the chemo wasn't working, that the cancer was too advanced. That it was too late for her. That she was losing her battle.

"I need some time off", he'd told Cragen. The days were passing and her time was running out. He wanted to be with her. He _needed_ to be with her. He understood the enormity now. This was real. It was happening. She wasn't going to get better. Olivia was fading away and he'd been too angry to do anything. He'd wasted too much time being angry. Angry at the doctors. Angry at the cancer. Angry at the unfairness. Angry at her. He regretted that so much, being mad at her. He didn't even know why he was, but she seemed to understand. She let him be angry. She let him take out his frustration on her, even though sickness was eating away at her from the inside. And he let himself do that to her, and he didn't even know why. Maybe it was because she was disappearing before his very eyes and he didn't know how to live without her. Hell it had been a year and Elliot still didn't know what he was doing.

It had only gone downhill after that. He spent every day with her and every day was a struggle to get through. The disease was killing Elliot just as much as it was killing Olivia. She'd fought so much, so hard. And he was so proud of her. So proud. But he could tell, even before she told him, he could tell that it was too much. That Olivia Benson wasn't winning this one. And Elliot couldn't even describe how much it hurt him to see the woman he knew so well slowly disappear.

Elliot remembered one time, he and Olivia was sitting in the hospital. She sat in a large brown chair with the chemotherapy IV attached to her tiny arm and they were looking through a box of her old photos. Olivia figured it was the perfect time to sort through them. And every few minutes he couldn't help but look up at her in that big brown chair that contrasted so much with her pale skin. She'd lost most of her colour as well as her body weight. Elliot remembered how small she looked in that chair, her bones practically poking out from her skin, her beanie fitted snugly on her head to cover her hair loss. And for hours Elliot sat there with Olivia, looking through her photos. Photos of her as a child with her mother, a teenager with her friends, an adult with her colleagues. He knew he was losing her and every photo was a reminder of that. He knew that one day soon these photos would be all he had to remember her by. And even though his heart broke a little more with every picture he looked at, he did it anyway. Because the way she smiled at each and every one made it worth it. Like she was remembering some happy memory from long ago before all this shit happened to her. Elliot cherished her smile. Just as he now cherished those photos. Now that she was gone.

The day of the funeral was a blur. He remembered being outside the church. She was never one for religion but she'd told him she wanted a church. He could remember seeing Cragen, Munch, Lake and Fin. Some of the old squad members... Monique Jeffries, Brian Cassidy. Even some victims from previous cases he and Olivia had worked on were there. Casey, Alex, Abbey and some others from the DA's office. Ed Green and Lennie Briscoe, even though they'd only ever worked on a few cases with her. Her ex-boyfriend Kurt was there too. So were Simon and Lucy. His own family... his ex-wife, his children. All dressed in black. Everyone was dressed in black. Elliot remembered carrying her casket out of the church at the end of the ceremony. Feeling numb as he, Don, Fin, John, Lake and Simon carried her body in a wooden box, knowing that in a short time she would be lowered into the ground and would stay there forever. But he had no idea what went on in the time between his entering and exiting the church.

He remembered the day after the funeral. He'd woken up on Kathy's couch with a pounding headache and an empty bottle of whisky on the ground beside him. Her Will was being read that day and her lawyer had told him he needed to be there. Elliot didn't know why. He assumed she would have left everything to Simon, her family. But she hadn't. Olivia had left him her apartment, and a letter. He went straight from the lawyer's office to the apartment. It hadn't been touched since she died and for some reason he found comfort in that. He walked through the apartment slowly, grabbing the photo of him and Olivia from the living room and bringing it with him into her bedroom. And only when he was seated on her bed, with her pillows and her smell around him and her smiling face looking up at him from the photo, did he open the letter.

It said that she knew he wouldn't go back to work straight away, and that was okay, but that it was going to cause money problems. And this way he had somewhere to live and wouldn't have to worry about finding a new apartment and moving out all his stuff, or paying rent because she had owned the place. And now he owned the place. Her place. And this way everyone was happy, she said. _Happy. _How could he be happy when she wasn't by his side? How could he ever be happy again? That's what Elliot had thought when he read that. But he understood what she had meant. He understood that she was trying to soften the blow that she knew would hit him when she passed on.

Olivia said other things too. She told him not to be sad for too long, just like she'd tell him almost every day when she was alive. And Elliot would nod and try to smile but he couldn't. He couldn't believe she didn't realise how much of him was going to die with her. In the letter she said she understood if he wasn't ready to go back to work straight away but that he shouldn't wait too long. _Don't wait too long to go back. And don't wait too long to get on with your life Elliot. Don't let yourself disappear with me, you have so much more to live for. You have so much more ahead of you._Elliot remembered how much he'd cried when he read the letter, especially the end where it said how thankful she was for everything that he did for her, before and after the cancer. Where she said how much she loved him for that. For being such a great partner, and an even greater friend. For being the longest relationship she's ever had with a man. For putting up with her for longer than anyone else could. For a few minutes he'd laughed through his tears, not surprised that Olivia had made reference to things he'd said in the past in a letter from beyond the grave. But it only lasted for a few minutes, because then the laughing stopped and only the tears remained, as well as the paralysing ache in his heart. And he'd gotten under the covers of her bed and laid there all day and all night, savouring her smell; all that remained of her. His arms tightly holding her blankets in a gathered shape in front of him while he let every single ounce of sadness, fear, anger and despair out of his body. Elliot cried until he couldn't breathe.

Elliot had visited Olivia's grave for the first time four days after the funeral. It had taken him that long to convince himself that it was something he needed to do but he still didn't feel that he was ready. He didn't think that he would ever feel ready but he pushed that aside and got up the courage to go to the cemetery. The idea of having an audience while he faced her grave was one that he hated so he'd gone in the early morning when no one was around. And even after four days of trying to prepare himself, Elliot couldn't handle the sight. It had only taken a few minutes for him to break down. He'd screamed. He'd cried. He'd called her a bitch. A selfish bitch for leaving him because he needed her. He still needed her so much. Then he'd fallen to his knees, madly apologising to the stone before him as if it was actually Olivia standing there. He hadn't meant the names he called her. He didn't know why he'd said it in the first place. Probably because he felt that raging anger was the only way to voice the pain that was eating away at him. And this time, Olivia wasn't there to settle his temper like she had so many times in the past. He remained on his knees, still crying but no longer screaming. He was whispering now. Whispering to her, believing that she could hear him. "I cant breathe without you here with me. You're not here and I don't know how to be here without you Olivia. Liv I don't know how to exist in a world where you don't… " He knew it was insane but he begged her to come back. To come back for him. Then he waited for Olivia to reply. And he just cried and begged more and more as he was greeted with deafening silence. And it was heartbreaking in an awful kind of way.

He'd gone back to work after a month and a half. He'd sat in that squadroom every day and stared at her desk. Her empty desk. No one had touched it in the time that he'd been away. No one had dared. And for a while he actually thought that her desk would stay like that forever. Until Cragen told him about his new partner. Told him that Olivia was finally going to be replaced. That her desk was going to be occupied. Elliot couldn't handle the thought so he decided he'd take her desk. Her chair. He hated the idea of his new partner sitting in Olivia's desk and figured it was better if he did. He was, after all, now living in her apartment. Not that he'd touched anything or made any changes. He didn't think he ever would. It was all he had left to connect himself to her. So he'd made the move, transferring his belongings across the desk so that they now mixed in with hers. He kept a photo of her on his desk. And one of her as a teenager, and another of them together. It took a while to adjust to his new space and Elliot wasn't sure if he ever really would. If he would ever really accept that him taking over the desk she occupied for almost a decade was okay.

A month later things were okay. He'd been seeing Huang regularly, under Captain Cragen's orders. Working with his new partner, Lauren Morgan. She was good. Capable. But she wasn't Olivia. Olivia was gone and there wasn't a day that went past that Elliot didn't think about her. Lauren and Elliot. Morgan and Stabler. It wasn't right. It didn't click. It wasn't Benson and Stabler. It wasn't Olivia and Elliot. But he tried his hardest to get past it because it was what Olivia wanted. She'd said it in the letter. She wanted him to move on. Lauren had asked him once. Asked him what she was like. What Olivia was like. Elliot had never mentioned Olivia to her before and she'd never asked, but he knew she'd heard the stories from Lake, Munch and Fin.

"She was perfect," he'd said, smiling down at the photo on the desk in front of him. "She was so perfect", he repeated, this time in a whisper as he closed his eyes. He treasured every moment he'd spent with her. Every minute in the past nine years.

Because by just being there, she'd made his life better.

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